Black as Cole
by dizzy eyes
Summary: This story is all Phoebe's thoughts. I had it posted before, but I kinda deleted it. : anyways, pleeeease R&R. i will love you forever


Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed. The creators, the producers, and I think the WB do. I don't own the characters either, I just wrote about them. And, I think the title I used was also an episode title. I don't own that either, dammit. **midnight sun**  
Black as Cole  
Phoebe Halliwell's room was silent. She slept restlessly, her mind filled with haunting dreams. "No," she mumbled in her sleep.  
  
~ Phoebe's Dream ~  
  
"Phoebe, you know that this is right. We have to kill them so that we can be together."  
  
"No. Cole, no. We don't have to kill them. We can't. They're my sisters," Phoebe begged, her voice breaking.  
  
"Phoebe, you have to choose. It's our life or their lives. You can't be my Queen and a Charmed one. It's them or us. What's your decision?" Cole asked in a calm voice laced with worry, worry that Phoebe would betray him. He knew her sisters must have had the same fear that she would betray them.  
  
"I love you, Cole," Phoebe told him, kissing him deeply. She then walked over to the third crystal, and put it in its place. Immediately, a dome of blinding white light formed around Cole. Phoebe chanted the spell with her sisters, blinking back her tears. She knew that there would be plenty of time to cry later. Cole's figure disappeared in a flash of light and smoke, the force of his vanquish shattering the windows and breaking everything in the penthouse.  
  
***  
  
That night, as Phoebe lay crying on her bed, Piper and Paige silently crept into her room, and sat next to Phoebe, doing their best to comfort their broken-hearted sister. Phoebe soon drifted into a sleep filled with nightmares about Cole. Her sisters then left her alone in her room, turning off the lights as they left as quietly as they came in.  
  
Suddenly, a voice cut through the thick silence of the night. "Phoebe," it whispered fiercely. "Phoebe," it said forcefully once again.  
  
Phoebe woke up and frantically searched for the source of the voice. It had sounded so much like Cole, but that wasn't possible, Cole was dead...  
  
~ end Phoebe's Dream ~  
  
Phoebe awoke with a start, gasping for breath. Her dream had seemed so real, it was so vivid. She looked around her shadowy bedroom, brightened only by the stream of moonlight coming through the window. 'It was only a dream, it wasn't real,' Phoebe thought, trying to calm herself down.  
  
"Cole is dead," Phoebe stated aloud. "He won't come back." 'Or will he?' asked a tiny voice in the back of her mind. 'He's come back before. Why not this time?'  
  
"No," Phoebe said firmly. She got out of her bed and grabbed her deep purple robe. Phoebe left her room and slowly descended the stairs. If she couldn't sleep, she figured the best thing to do was go to the kitchen and get some tea.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Phoebe sat at the kitchen table and sipped her hot tea. She thought about what Paige had told her and Piper. Her sister had said that Cole had transported himself to an alternate reality, and she had inadvertently gone along for the ride. Paige told them that in the other reality, Cole and Phoebe ruled the underworld, but were not in love with each other any longer. 'Were we ever really in love?' Phoebe questioned herself. 'It always seemed that way. I know he loved me, in his own way. And I did love the Cole that I knew, the one that I met and fell for in the first place. I guess that it was only his demonic half that caused this all. Did he ever mean to fall in love with me? Was it all just part of his eventual plan? If it was, why would he have helped us so many times? Why would he have helped to save all of those innocents?  
  
'Because he knew that if he hadn't, my sisters never would have trusted that he was on our side,' she realized. Paige had said that Cole went back looking for a way to prevent their relationship from ending. He had wanted to keep Phoebe and himself together, no matter the cost. He just didn't know that changing one thing would change it all for them. Paige had also stated that when she and the other Phoebe and Piper tried to vanquish Cole, it worked. Cole forgot that he wouldn't be invincible in a different past.  
  
Phoebe thought about that for a while. Did she miss Cole? 'No,' she told herself. 'That part of my life was over a long time ago. It ended when he started lying to us, to me again. It was over the moment he made me choose between him and my sisters. It should have been gone forever when he died. When he died the first time. Cole shouldn't have been able to cheat his death. He only did it because he couldn't let go of us, of our past, our history. So why could I let go?  
  
'Maybe I never really did,' Phoebe mused. 'Maybe Cole was right. Maybe we were meant to be. Maybe our love was meant to last forever. But, if it was meant to be, then why couldn't our love take what we put it through?' she wondered. 'Because I never wanted it to. I didn't want to be partnered with evil for the rest of my life.'  
  
Paige had assured Phoebe that she hadn't opposed their plan to kill Phoebe's husband. When the sisters went to Cole's penthouse, it was indeed empty, and there was no sign that Cole had been there recently. Phoebe remembered that she picked up Cole's picture of him and her, the one that was taken when they were still happy together.  
  
When she put the picture frame down, Phoebe had told her sisters that she didn't miss Cole at all. It was the same thing she had said the last time they tried to vanquish Cole. She told Cole that she wouldn't even feel a thing when he was gone. No empty space, no part of her heart that was heavy with regret for him. But was that the truth?  
  
Phoebe knew that on some level, she did miss Cole, the Cole that she knew before everything had happened, before she knew all of his secrets. She missed that Cole terribly.  
  
'I know I shouldn't miss him so much. I promised myself that I had let go a long time ago. There's no excuse for what he did to the world,  
'to us  
'to me.  
  
'After all of the deception, the lies, the deceit...  
  
'I don't know if I can find it in my heart, even now, to forgive him, what he did.  
  
'It was evil; he was evil.  
  
'And evil is black.  
  
'Black as Cole.'  
  
Hey, I used to have this story up, but then I accidentally deleted it when I got rid of the note... so anyways, I'm just putting the other reviewers at the bottom of this page. Ok, my question now is should I continue this? I don't know how I would do it, and I also know that by now the storyline is old, but who cares. This is fan fiction, right? That's what I thought. Ok, so here are the other reviewers, even though there weren't a lot:  
  
bubbly*pop  
2003-02-07  
That was beautifully written. Are you writing more? Please do, you've captured the 'essence' of the Cole/Phoebe relationship very accurately. Keep writing, please!  
  
snowflakelatte  
2003-02-06  
OOOOH! Sounds great so far! Keep it comin! The only thing is that I got a little confused, but I think I got it! I wish there was an automatic sign in on here, it gets sooo annoying typing in one of my many (hehe, btw i have a new 1) email addresses! Bye! I luv u! ~*eVa*~  
  
Liz Moore   
2003-02-06  
I wonder if Phoebe would really consider Cole evil if she knew how he really became the Source. I doubt it.  
  
Thanks you guys!!!  
  
**midnight sun** 


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